


Crying Out In The Wilderness

by Cephy



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Carlos in the Desert Otherworld, Homesickness, M/M, Mountains, Post-Episode: e049 Old Oak Doors Part B, Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-15 22:39:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 11,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3464672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cephy/pseuds/Cephy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of "Old Oak Doors", Carlos is lost in a desert otherworld. This is the story of how he finds his way home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Diverges mildly from canon after Episode 49 - Old Oak Doors.
> 
> Should I warn for Kevin? I kind of feel like I should warn for Kevin.

Carlos takes a deep breath, and hits the disconnect button on his phone. It feels-- final, somehow. Important. Cutting off his message to Cecil just as the closing door had cut off Cecil himself.

 _A scientist is... usually fine_.

He doesn't feel terribly fine right now.

Around him, the masked warriors with their rough fur collars and elaborate spears mill about, murmuring to each other in their voices like grinding stone. There are so many of them-- all of them, perhaps, assuming that the doors apparently all let out to this one patch of desert, no different from any other patch as far as Carlos can tell. In the not-so-distance, the mountain blinks. In the slightly-more-distance opposite that blinking, a brilliant light is fading from the horizon, accompanied by a faint and diminishing rumble: robbed of its prize, the smiling god has turned its attention elsewhere, thankfully paying no attention to the few tiny creatures left in its wake.

Carlos closes his hand a little tighter, and his phone cuts into his fingers.

"Okay," he says. "Now what?"

Several of the giants crouch down next to him, tilting their faces curiously. He manages to smile at them. "Sorry, just talking to myself. You-- uh. Where will you go from here?"

One of them shrugs a shoulder and makes a graceful, sweeping gesture out towards the endless desert. **Out** , comes the wave of _thoughtintentionpurpose_ that is, as far as he can tell, the vast majority of how they communicate; Carlos is rather proud that he didn't even have to close his eyes anymore to ride through it. **Around. Home is all; home is where we put our feet. We go home.**

 _Home_ , Carlos thinks, and has to close his eyes after all as his breath catches.

A rumbling mutter, and there is a careful fingertip pressing against his shoulder, a muted rush of **what, comfort, hurt, how?** that prompts another, somewhat watery smile out of him.

"I would like to go home, too," he says, too tired for anything but honesty.

The giant, masked face tilts again, and the eyes gleaming pupilless and earth-brown through the slits in the mask seem to narrow. Then, it nods. **Help,** comes the _thoughtidea_. That great mask turns towards its fellows, nodding.

 **Help,** they echo, nodding back, and Carlos' breath catches again at the wave of careful fondness that sweeps into him from them, and at the relief that comes from no other source but himself.

"Thank you," he breathes, then clears his throat. "Thank you," he repeats, louder.

That finger reaches back down and taps him on the head. **Rest. Important. Battle done, victory, now to rest. All else will come.**

And Carlos lets himself be drawn into the vast circle of milling warriors, lets himself drift as they too drift to a halt, leaning together in twos and threes and mores, letting their long limbs fold together. When a body settles to the sand next to him, Carlos droops against it and closes his eyes, finally giving in to exhaustion.

He sleeps, and he dreams of light, and he wakes some time later with a gasp in his throat and a rictus grin trying to curl his lips.

The vast expanse of the desert is not appreciably darker that it was when Carlos closed his eyes. The shapes of the warriors around him are unmoving, like pieces of the desert themselves, sentinel stones arranged in rough rings. The red light on the mountain is blinking placidly, and there is none of that terrible brilliant radiance of the smiling god left anywhere in the sky. All is still. There is nothing that should have woken him.

Except there is.

It takes him too long to pick out the smaller shape in the shadow of the masked warriors, too long for his brain to process the fact that the figure sitting opposite him is only the size of a normal man.

"Well," the man says, and with that single word Carlos' thoughts come to a screeching halt. "This looks cozy."

For the moment while his limbs are frozen in shock, Carlos thinks: _Cecil_. That voice has the same rich timbre, the same charismatic draw. The same sense of hidden depth and banked power. It is a kind of voice that Carlos has only ever associated with Cecil.

But after that first moment passes, Carlos hears the discordant note beneath the voice, like one sour note in a choir of nonexistent angels. And as the figure steps out of the shadows, Carlos can see that he is smiling. And smiling. And _smiling_.

Carlos shudders, shrinking back against the hand that shelters him. That hand twitches faintly in response, and above him a mask tilts slightly downward.

The rumbling growl that rips out of the warrior above him sends Carlos cowering to the ground, hands up over his head. Moving more swiftly than Carlos had ever imagined it could, the warrior twists and lashes out and has the stranger pinned down beneath the cage of its fingers before Carlos can even catch his breath. The others begin to come awake around them, their own voices joining the din until Carlos' head is spinning from the sound. Through it all, he can't take his eyes off the stranger's unfading smile.

 **Quiet** , someone _thinksays_. **Calm. Have care for small ears.**

The grating roar shaking the air slowly dies away, like the rattling end of an avalanche. Carlos draws a shaky breath and makes himself close his eyes as he sobs it back out.

"You must be our missing scientist," the stranger's voice comes again, bare seconds after the warriors fall silent, like he is completely unaffected by their wrath. "I knew I would meet you someday. Cecil always spoke of you so highly, I knew that someday I would have to see you for myself. Though I had hoped it would be under-- _different_ circumstances."

Carlos' head jerks up again, but his eyes get stuck somewhere around the stranger's collarbone. "Cecil? You know-- who are you?"

 **Who?** the warriors echo. **Who, who, who**. But if the stranger heard them he doesn't give any sign; his focus never shifts from Carlos.

"Call me Kevin."

Carlos draws in a sharp, startled breath as he understands at last. "From Desert Bluffs," he says, his voice wound tight in his throat. "You were on their radio."

"Ohh," Kevin coos, and Carlos shivers. "You remember me."

"You work for Strex," Carlos goes on, louder, hands clenching at his sides.

Kevin makes a _tsk_ sound deep in his chest. "As do you," he says, in a horrible parody of gentleness. "As do we all. The smiling god owns all, and in all he is united."

Carlos lifts his chin, and forces his eyes up as far as Kevin's right cheekbone. "I _don't_ ," he says firmly. "Cecil doesn't. None of Night Vale does, not anymore. You _lost_. Your smiling god is gone."

Out of the corner of his eye, Carlos sees the very tips of Kevin's smile wilt ever so slightly. "Oh, I think you'll find that he isn't," Kevin says, and his voice is a low hum, full of casual malevolence and unspoken threats. It is a voice that calls to mind a needle in one's ear, a big cat purring as it licks blood from its lips. "I think you'll find that it's not so easy to block out that light. That wherever it touches, the fire burns deep and long. He's tasted you now, Carlos; you and all of Night Vale. He won't give you up so easily."

A strained silence falls for long, tense moments, before Kevin's laugh breaks it again. "But hey," he says cheerfully, "if it makes you feel better to believe you're free, you go right ahead. It certainly can't hurt. Not yet, anyway."

Carlos shivers, and shivers again, and soon realizes that he can't quite stop shaking. One of the giant warriors, next to him, rumbles lowly and crouches down, and lifts Carlos up off the ground in careful fingers. The one pinning Kevin down also stands, leaving Kevin sprawled against the dirt but free.

 **Go,** one of them says, and Carlos isn't sure whether they're talking to Kevin or each other until the rest of the warriors also climb to their feet. **Go now, swift, sure-footed. Far.**

 **Away,** the rest agree. **Away**.

Tucking Carlos carefully against its chest, the masked warrior stretches out its legs and begins walking in great, ground-devouring strides. The others fall in around them, still clustered in twos and threes and mores, swaying in their steps like trees in the wind. Craning his neck, Carlos peers back over his carrier's shoulder only once, to the quickly-diminishing figure still lying on the ground behind them.

Kevin's mouth is wide, his lips still curled in a smile. From the shaking of his chest, he is laughing.

Carlos closes his eyes, burrows into the warrior's shoulder, and lets himself be carried away.


	2. Chapter 2

There are not really such things as day and night in the endless, otherworld desert that Carlos has been trapped in. Every now and then there's a faint deepening of the shadow that could have marked nighttime, and even more rarely there's a barely-perceptible flash directly overhead that he usually thinks of as midday. But for the most part, everything stays the same, and Carlos is actually used to that by now. Rather than setting his own patterns by the unchanging half-light, he usually just sleeps whenever he's tired and soldiers on otherwise.

Being carried around by a giant, masked warrior instead of walking, however, doesn't do much to tire him out, especially when he ends up nodding off under the rocking rhythm of their steps more often than not. So it's probably inevitable that when the warriors settle down again for their own rest, much later, Carlos finds himself wide awake and restless.

In the silent ever-dusk of the desert he finds himself finger-measuring the regular, repeating whorls in the sand, counting out the timing of the stars' on-and-off pulse. He stares at the mountain and tries to convince himself it isn't, in fact, perfectly symmetrical, despite all visual evidence to the contrary. His fingers itch for pen and paper, his mind is already charting out hypotheses and calculations and possible explanations. It's a way to pass the time, at least; one of the very best. It’s certainly better than vainly searching the horizon for anything resembling an oak door, and coming up empty again and again.

Silent as it is, he hears the crunching in the sand long before the figure making those sounds comes into view through the low-hanging dust. Kevin comes walking with his hands in his pockets and his head tipped faintly up, like he is out for a casual stroll and got distracted by a passing cloud. He ambles forward until he's roughly twenty paces away from Carlos, and then he stops.

Carlos meets Kevin's eyes before he can remember not to, and shudders away again quickly.

Kevin's voice drifts over to him, carried on the nonexistent wind. "Your new friends move quickly. It's rather rude of them, actually, making me chase you all this way just to talk."

"How did you--" Carlos starts to ask, before thinking better of it and falling silent. However Kevin had kept up or _caught_ up to the warriors' long strides, it's probably better that he doesn't know. "You want to talk?" he asks instead, doing his best to convey his skepticism.

Hands still in his pockets, Kevin shrugs grandly. "Why not? You, my dear scientist, are possibly the only human being in this entire world. There's not exactly anyone else for me to talk _to_. And what is a voice without anyone to hear it speak?"

For some reason, the words remind him so very much of _Cecil_ that they startle Carlos into a laugh before he can lock it down under a cough, instead. Uneasy, he turns away; he turns back immediately, even more uneasy with his back exposed. "Fine," he mutters, "go ahead and talk. I make no promises to listen."

Silence.

Carlos looks up, quirks an eyebrow at Kevin's shoulder. "Well?"

He sees Kevin draw a slow breath and let it out again, silently. "I can't think of anything to say," he eventually says, sounding surprised. "That's new."

There are sarcastic words on the tip of Carlos' tongue-- _what, no more sermons from your smiling god?_ \-- but for some reason they just sit there like a bad taste and refuse to come out. The silence lengthens.

Eventually, Kevin turns on his heel and walks away.

Carlos goes back to the sheltering rings of the masked warriors, curls into the sand-- and then, remembering, he draws out his phone with fingers that shake only slightly. He punches in the familiar number and waits with his breath caught in his throat, suddenly desperate to hear Cecil's voice.

The line clicks. " _Carlos!_ "

Carlos' eyes squeeze shut. "Hi, Cecil."

" _Carlos, oh my god, are you all right? I tried calling you back, but the call wouldn't go through, are you-- have you found--_ "

"I'm fine, I'm with the masked warriors, they're kind of looking after me." He hesitates, but quickly decides not to mention Kevin; he doesn't want to worry Cecil about it. "I think they're going to help me find a way back. We've covered a lot of ground already," he adds, guiltily realizing as he does so that he was actually asleep through most of it, and not keeping his eyes out for any doors. But he's pretty sure that his new friends would have woken him if anything had come up. "Everyone there is all right?"

" _Yes, we're fine. Everything is fine, Carlos, the beings who call themselves angels--"_ Cecil's voice broke off in a disgusted sound; Carlos can practically see him rolling his eyes. _"They own Strexcorp now. Everything is going back to normal, and it is **so** much better than fine._ "

Carlos almost laughs out loud at the idea of Night Vale being _normal_ , but-- he supposes he gets the idea. Normal, for Cecil, is not necessarily Carlos' own normal. And it is so good to hear him happy again.

"I miss you," is all he says in response. "I love you."

" _I love you, too. Come home soon._ "

Carlos tries to swallow down the lump in his throat and only halfway succeeds, but he's smiling nonetheless. "I'll try."

He hangs up, eyes prickling, and curls down onto the sand to try and sleep, his hand still closed tight around his phone.

He's still slipping in and out of a light doze when the first of the warriors stirs, soon followed by the rest. As one of them leans down to pick Carlos up again, Carlos looks up at it-- at _him_ , he thinks; the warrior's _thoughtfeelings_ feel like a _him_ , somehow. "What's your name?" Carlos asks, then winces. "Uh, I mean, do you have names? Or-- designations? Preferred methods of address?"

The eyes behind the mask look, maybe, a little amused. **Skyblazingsunheatredhazeblackglassfirefallinglifeblazehearthhome** comes the rush of impressions in answer, and Carlos gapes.

"Wow. I, uh. I don't think I can pronounce that," he says faintly. "Do you mind if I, kinda, translate it?"

The warrior shrugs. Carlos thinks for a moment, rolls the _feeling_ of the name over in his head, then nods decisively.

"Doug."

The warrior shrugs again, and lifts Carlos the rest of the way to perch on his shoulder, where Carlos hangs onto one of the woven, beaded strings coming off the edge of Doug's mask. "So, Doug," he starts. "Please don’t take this the wrong way, but do you actually know how to get me home? Because I don't," he admits. "I mean, I figure I'll look for one of those doors, there's got to still be one around, somewhere. But I really don't know where to start. There doesn't seem to be much out here," he finishes glumly, waving a hand at all the empty sand.

Doug makes a faint clattering sound, like pebbles hitting each other, and lifts a hand to point towards the mountain.

Carlos frowns. "Dana told me about that place. She didn't mention there being any of the oak doors there."

Doug just points again, tipping his head in a faint nod towards the mountain with its blinking red light. **There,** he says. **Beginning. Beginning of all.**

"Right," Carlos replies after a minute. "Because that doesn't sound at all mysterious or ominous in any way."

Doug turns and looks at him, and there is a definite glint in his mud-brown eyes. **Yes.**

Carlos is still laughing when they start to walk.


	3. Chapter 3

They stop twice more for rest on their way to the mountain. Each pseudo-night, Carlos is set down carefully and tucked into the shelter formed by the leaning bodies of Doug and his-- partner? Family unit? Carlos still isn't sure just how or why the warriors sort themselves out into their twos and threes and mores. But it certainly seems that he's been adopted by this particular twosome, since they are always the ones carrying him, and most often the ones who talk to him directly.

After some futile attempts to see if Doug's partner gives off the same _him_ vibes that Doug himself does (or _her_ vibes, for that matter), Carlos eventually shrugs and lets the matter go. They introduce themselves as **Freerunwindsiftfootsteppresspushsweepflygustupupup** ; Carlos offers the name "Alicia", which is accepted with a grave nod. Alicia has an elaborate pattern of hollowed-out bones and flat, polished rocks around the edge of their mask, which lends them a bit of a sinister look to Carlos' first impression, but they are quick to touch a comforting finger to Carlos' back or shoulder when they think he's looking down. They also have a grey stone bracelet the size of a tractor tire, painstakingly and loving carved into the shape of a dog chasing its own tail-- a carved dog which, he discovers one night, _actually is chasing its own tail_ , most of the time, and which will respond to ears-rubs with a thumpy back paw and a lolling tongue.

He sleeps that night curled up next to Alicia's wrist, with a broad, doggie nose whuffing gently against his hip. It's the best he's slept since he left Night Vale.

He watches the shadows before he closes his eyes, both nights, but Kevin doesn't show. Carlos doesn't know whether to be thankful or worried.

The mountain's lower slopes are just as steep and jagged as Dana had described, although they hardly seem a hindrance to the long strides of the masked warriors who swarm up to the summit easy as you please. Doug sets Carlos down carefully at the top, where the loose scree and cracked edges give way to something smoothed and flattened by time and who knows what else.

There is a lighthouse on the top of the mountain. Carlos walks around it once, looking for a door and finding none. He stares up at the blinking red light, wondering, for long moments before moving on.

The gorge beyond the lighthouse is also as Dana described to him: a narrow canyon that spirals down and down, lined on either side with recessed doors that lead to long-empty houses carved from the rock. Doug rattles uneasily as Carlos starts down the path, as he is too large to follow, and Carlos looks back with what he hopes is a comforting smile. He's only a _little_ nervous of being alone in this empty, ghost-filled place, after all; there's no reason his smile should be anything less than comforting. "I'll come back up soon. I just need to have a look around."

The first house he enters is thick with dust but otherwise whole, with empty cups on the table and personal belongings scattered about. No bodies of any shape or sort, he's relieved to find (not that he was expecting any, of course, but clearly he's seen a few too many horror movies in his time to really put that possibility out of his head). No oak doors, either, not in any of the rooms or on the ceilings or hidden behind the decorative plates on the walls.

He's about one full turn of the spiral down when he finds the first triangle on the wall, dull orange and sunken like it had been etched instead of painted. The chill of finding Strexcorp's logo in this of all places leaves him momentarily breathless. Staring at it for too long sets a low throb pulsing behind his eyes, but when he looks away it's only to find another, slightly larger, just a little further on. And another, on the opposite wall-- and another, just beside it, and another--

He is at least one more turn down, well below the surface, when Kevin steps out of the shadowed doorway ahead of him. "Well, Carlos?" Kevin says lightly. "Have you got it all figured out yet? All the questions answered, all the problems solved?"

Flattened back against the wall, Carlos sends a swift glance over his shoulder and considers running, calculates quickly whether he can make it back to the surface and find his friends, before-- before whatever it is that Kevin wants to do can be done. But another look at Kevin finds the man just standing there. Not even looking at Carlos, just trailing his fingers lightly over one of the orange triangles, his tangled, matted hair falling in front of his face.

Carlos takes a deep breath, braces himself. "No," he admits. "I don't even know where to start."

Kevin glances his way-- Carlos quickly averts his eyes, but not before he catches a glimpse of an expression that looks rather like surprise. "Oh? How honest of you. I don't know whether I'm impressed or disappointed." He pushes his hand flat to the wall, palm spread over the whole of the triangle.

"How can that be here?" Carlos asks, despite himself. The potential for knowledge has always overwhelmed his more rational urges such as, apparently, his self-preservation instincts. “That symbol is Strexcorp, isn't it? Did you people come here too?”

“Look around you," Kevin says, voice dripping with scorn. "No one has come here for a very long time.”

“Explain it to me, then," Carlos challenges. “That's the symbol of your company on the wall of a city that's been empty for years.”

“For centuries,” Kevin agrees.

“So? How?”

Kevin sighs heavily, theatrically. "Clearly your pursuit of _science_ does not include deciphering the obvious. Strex,” he goes on, slowly, mocking, “was not born in Desert Bluffs. The smiling god walked into my fair city from somewhere else, set down roots and grew, and grew. That was many years ago."

One of Kevin's hands trails along the wall, traces the orange triangles, and he makes a low, humming sound deep in his throat. “If I had to guess,” he says, his voice gone distant, “I'd say that these people, these long-ago-gone people, were once something strong and bright and free. They lived in their mountain, which was crowned by a warning light to tell them when to hide away deep where the light couldn't reach, where they could cower and hide until the shadows fell once more. But that strength of theirs was slowly eaten away.”

Kevin’s voice is swaying, sing-song. Mesmerizing. “Maybe they fought. They probably tried to. But the smiling god ate his way into their hearts, and eventually they were his. Just like everyone else he touches. And once they were his, they left their homes behind and went out to spread his word and do his work. Whoever they were, before, from that point on they were only Strex.”

An audible breath, in and out, perhaps not entirely steady, during which Carlos holds his own breath and tries not to blink.

Then Kevin's tone changes, all cheer and malice once again. "And really, after that it was only a matter of time before they incorporated. Such a good move on their part, don’t you think? Who wouldn't want to join a wonderful company with fantastic benefits and such a reputation for productivity?”

The tone grates on Carlos' nerves. “Your _wonderful company_ ,” he fires back, aiming to wound, "is owned by the angels now. I imagine you'll see some changes in staffing.”

"Angels," Kevin scoffs.

Carlos groans-- he can’t help himself. "Oh come on, not you too. They _are_ real, surely you must have seen enough to know--"

"One angel," Kevin interrupts, sharp. "Or rather, one Erika. One being. Did you think there were no other gods in the universe? That the smiling god doesn’t have his enemies? Or, no, not exactly enemies. _Enemies_ implies some degree of equality, and Strex is so much more than they. Of course, even minor gods are worthy of fear. And yet you people have one living alongside you, and you’re willfully ignoring its presence, letting it gather its power.” He glares over at Carlos, there and gone again like a hot breath of wind. “Hypocrites and fools, all of you.”

Carlos gamely shakes his head. “The angels are good.”

“How do you know?” Kevin hisses. “Maybe the person who brought the smiling god into this stronghold thought the same of him. You’ll never know for certain until it’s too late.”

Kevin stalks off further down the spiral, vanishing quickly. Carlos takes a moment to just lean against the nearest wall and breathe as his mind reels under the onslaught of new information. Long practice with that sort of thing lets him set it aside for the moment, filed away for proper consideration when he’s not alone in what may very well be the birthplace of Strexcorp.

Soured on the idea of further exploration for the time being, he’s about to turn around and start back for the surface when his eye catches on the door to the house that Kevin had earlier vacated. Suspicious, he edges inside and glances around, and is unaccountably disappointed-- or relieved-- when inside is just more of the same. Dust and plates, tables and unmade beds and empty vases and picture frames on the wall--

Something moves in the corner of his eye. Carlos whips his head around, heart pounding, only to face an apparently empty room.

Something moves again, and this time Carlos follows the motion to one of the picture frames, to the things _inside_ the picture frames. For the first time, he really looks at them, blows at the dust coating the edges and tries to make sense of what’s within.

It’s Night Vale.

It’s a street, in Night Vale, with the Ralph’s just visible at one end and the usual cluster of Hooded Figures loitering at the corner. Two people carrying a Big Rico’s box are walking arm-in-arm down the sidewalk at the mandatory skipping pace for arm-in-arm strolls.

They are _moving_. Their little printed feet kick out in synch, and they get smaller and smaller in the frame until they vanish down a side street, replaced in time by a group of uniformed Boy Scouts on their way to a meeting, scepters in hand.

Heart suddenly pounding for an entirely different reason, Carlos quickly looks to the other frame on the wall. This one shows a park, apparently empty but for trees and flowers and an oddly-shaped statue. It’s enough, though; Carlos had spent one ill-advised afternoon trying to study the Shape in Mission Grove Park, and that was more than enough to recognize it on sight, no matter what configuration it had twisted itself into on any given day.

There are only those two frames on the wall in this particular house. Carlos tears out the door and goes back up the spiral, knowing that two, maybe three houses back there had been one room in particular that had been full of frames. He hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but if it’s at all the same-

He finds it, and stops, and stares at the array of tiny vistas all moving and changing and _living_ there upon the wall. John Peters leaning against the wall of his barn. The hole out back of the Ralph’s, currently empty of huddlers but still unmistakeable. A small row of shrubs with the boots of a Secret Police agent just peeking out near the trunk.

Cecil. Cecil in his bathroom, carefully shaving in front of a draped mirror with his eyes screwed shut. For a moment, Carlos can’t breathe. Then, he fumbles out his phone, suddenly desperate to hear his boyfriend’s voice.

He gets voice mail, of course, and spends a few minutes rambling while he leans on the wall beside the frame and just-- stares. Stares until his eyes sting and water and he has to blink furiously--

And cough. And blink and cough some more as something falls on his face-- dust from the ceiling.

_Why is there dust coming from the ceiling?_

A fresh wave falls as the stone beneath his feet trembles.

_Oh,_ Carlos thinks numbly, _that’s why_.

Underground is not a good place to be during an earthquake. But he hesitates nonetheless, wasting long minutes staring at that picture frame while the room shakes more and more violently around him. He tries, once, to pull it from the wall and take it with him, but it doesn’t budge, not even a little. So he just stares at it intently, soaking in the sight of Cecil, until the next rumbling shake comes and nearly sends him to his knees.

Then, heartsore, he runs. The orange triangles in the hallway are glowing around the edges.

Doug is standing alone near the lighthouse, shifting from foot to foot and staring out at the desert. When he sees Carlos emerge, he immediately reaches out a hand. **Come. Now. Now. _Now_**.

The lighthouse is no longer blinking but glaring red, bloody and unrelenting and ominous. And the sky-- the sky is lit up brilliantly. The sky is _fading_ at the edges, and beyond the translucent veil of star-spangled void there is only the uncoiling edge of reality.

Heart in his throat, Carlos looks out into the desert. And he screams. And he falls.

He comes to again cradled carefully in Doug’s arms as Doug himself, apparently, runs as fast as his long legs can carry him. Carlos’ head is pounding and his throat is dry, and there is something tickling at the edge of his memory that he doesn’t want to look at.

The sky behind them is mid-day bright; ahead, soothing dusk. Carlos shivers and closes his eyes again, lets himself be carried away.


	4. Chapter 4

“What happened?” he croaks when they finally stop. The warriors are huddled together even more tightly than usual, family groups all but indistinguishable from each other. Doug hasn’t let Carlos down to the ground as he usually does but rather has kept him perched on one broad knee, hands hovering like he might snatch up his small charge again at any second.

For a long moment, Doug doesn’t answer, just clicks out a low sound of unease that is echoed around the group in waves. **Not good** , is what he eventually says, and Carlos nearly laughs at the understatement. **Move swiftly. Leave the light behind. Always have done; always must do**.

_The light_. Carlos shivers. The inside of his eyelids still feel-- scorched. Full of little pinpricks of afterburn, like if he closed his eyes he would see nothing but red shadows. He still can’t entirely remember what he saw, up on the mountain, and he figures he’s probably better off for it. But that dreadful light had definitely been part of it.

“You’ve seen it before, then? Is that--“ Carlos’ eyes go wide as he works through the implications. “Is that why you’re nomads? So you can keep away from it?”

Doug regards him solemnly. **Always must do** , he repeats.

_Or else what?_ Carlos doesn’t dare ask. Isn’t sure he wants to ask.

Kevin finds him again when all the warriors are asleep. Carlos’ own thoughts are buzzing far too frantically for him to follow their example, despite the grey exhaustion pulling at the edges of his thoughts. The slow crunch of footsteps in the sand is almost a welcome distraction, despite the threat inherent in the man’s presence.

He glances at Kevin just once as he comes into view, shuddering at the man’s wide, gaping smile, then fixes his eyes firmly on the ground. “What happened back there?” he demands.

“You’re the _scientist_. Figure it out for yourself.”

Carlos scowls, nettled. “Fine.” He takes a slow breath, hesitating, then finally puts his suspicion into words. “That was your smiling god.”

“Yes.”

“Strex.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Kevin hisses.

“Was he chasing you?”

Kevin gives a disappointed little _tsk_. “I have already gazed upon the beauteous countenance of the smiling god. He doesn’t need to chase me, only call and I will answer.”

Carlos narrowly resists rolling his eyes. “Fine. So he was there for either the warriors, or me,” he says, testing, watching the corner of Kevin’s jaw for a reaction and seeing none. “Or, for something in the mountain itself. Or all of the above.”

“Now you’re thinking.”

Carlos thinks a moment longer, then his eyes go wide. “The pictures,” he blurts. “Pictures in wooden frames. Oak door frames. Both leading to Night Vale. Are they--“

“Close, but not quite,” Kevin says. He actually sounds a little regretful. “The pictures don’t really show Night Vale, you know. Not specifically. Why would an ancient civilization in an otherworld desert want pictures of a town that didn’t even exist at that time? No, the pictures show the things that you most dearly want to see. Those you love. Places you’ve been. They reach out and pull back a little of that other place, so they can show it to you. They are similar to the doors, when they’ve been activated. Similar enough to draw the attention of certain-- other parties. But not the same.”

For a moment, Carlos has to close his eyes against the crushing disappointment. “I thought they were like-- windows into Night Vale. Windows instead of doors. But no, you’re right, that doesn’t make sense. And so, I guess there’s no way to go through them, then.”

“No.”

Carlos manages a thin laugh. “You’d think your smiling god would know that already, if he’s been wandering around this desert for as long as you say. Maybe he’s not so bright after all.”

“He thinks differently than we do. On a different scale. Think of him-- less like a person, and more like an act of nature. An avalanche doesn’t notice exactly where it is going or what it crushes in the process, only that it is moving downhill.”

Carlos pulls a face. “That’s a cheerful image.”

Kevin laughs. “Isn’t it, though?”

Carlos starts to say something else, but is interrupted by a series of jaw-cracking yawns. Kevin chuckles. “Go to sleep, scientist,” he says, and from anyone else Carlos would have called that tone of voice _fond_. “You’re a much better conversationalist when you’re rested.”

Kevin vanishes away into the sand, just like that, and Carlos drags himself over to his place in Doug and Alicia’s shadows. His thoughts are finally winding down, blurring and going soft at the edges. He tucks himself into the space between Alicia’s wrist and her stone dog’s surprisingly warm flank, and sleeps.


	5. Chapter 5

Thus begins a long, uneventful time spent searching the desert. It’s easy to lose track of time. His phone is perpetually frozen at 97%, and the clock function only shows the fuzzy outline of a bee. His conversations with Cecil are no help, since he’s not entirely convinced they're happening in order. The warriors stop for rest in a mostly regular schedule, but in the monotony it’s easy to lose track of just how many times it is that they’ve done so. Ten? Twenty? Has it been a month already?

The desert wastes are exquisitely empty. They don’t find any doors. Nor do they find anything else, for that matter; the only distinguishing feature in the entire otherworld seems to be the mountain, and Carlos doesn’t dare go back to that place. Not because he thinks that Strex is still there-- the sky over the mountain has darkened and the lighthouse is blinking placidly once more, so it’s safe to say the smiling god has moved on-- but because he knows he would look at the picture frames again, he wouldn’t be able to help himself, and that would bring that terrible light right back down on his head. So unless he can think up some fast and foolproof way to turn the pictures into doors, it’s better to keep his distance.

He calls Cecil as often as he can without giving himself away; he rations himself despite his phone’s endless battery, because if he didn’t he’d just never hang up. If he limits his calls, makes up strict rules about when and how long he can talk, he can almost convince himself that he’s on vacation, or running a field study program. He makes up long, convoluted stories about all of the experiments he’s done, knowing that the word _science_ is enough to give him carte blanche as far as anything that follows is concerned. It’s sweet, if still slightly baffling. No matter how many times he’s tried to educate Cecil on what _science_ actually is, his boyfriend remains willfully and contentedly ignorant, and Carlos has mostly given up on trying.

It’s a blessing in disguise, now, as Carlos makes up increasingly outlandish stories, deliberately downplays the whole thing, does his best to keep Cecil from worrying too much. Tries desperately to not share his own increasing discouragement, because if Cecil thinks he’s just distracted by the desert and not really looking for the way back, then maybe Cecil won’t realize what Carlos is already beginning to fear: that there actually is no way back to find.

Against all expectations, Carlos finds himself looking forward to Kevin's unpredictable visits. The man is still as unsettling as ever, but he’s _there_ , another voice in this otherwise empty place. Doug and Alicia and the others are great, but they’re not big on conversation, and they seem perfectly happy to just spend their days walking and sleeping. Kevin at least offers a break in the routine. Even better, he seems like he has _answers_ , if Carlos can just tease them out of him. More often than not, their conversations run in circles and leave Carlos frustrated, but every now and then Kevin seems to forget himself, to slip and tell him things without the riddles and veiled threats and deliberate antagonism.

“The doors simply lead to where you’re meant to be,” goes one such conversation. “They offer a choice: one side, or the other; forward, or back? But the nature of a door means that it’s not only you that can use it. So long as it’s open, why, anything can walk through.”

“Including a smiling god?”

“ _Anything_.”

“Were there doors in Desert Bluffs, too? Before Strex came?”

Kevin lifts a finger to tap against his lips, slow and thoughtful. “You know, I’m not entirely sure,” he admits. “There are places where I should have memories, you see, but they’re not always there when I look for them. I do think I remember standing in front of a door. There must be something about Strex that brings them out, something that brings people to the point of choice: where do they belong; where are they going; do they open the door or shut it tight?”

Kevin himself is lying back on the sand, staring up towards the sky. Carlos is sitting close enough that he can hear without straining, far enough that the crawling on his skin is nothing but a faint tickle.

“And you?” he asks. “Did you open the door?”

Kevin sighs, and closes his eyes; his finger goes _tap, tap, tap_. Carlos’ chest feels tight; he is barely daring to breathe, lest he break the mood creeping over them. “No,” Kevin eventually says, his voice gone thin and distant. “Not me. They were already open when I found them, and the smiling god already had one foot through when I tried to close them again.”

_Tap, tap_ , goes Kevin’s finger. He isn’t smiling anymore.

“I pushed that door as hard as I could, stuck it fast with stones and bones and splintered nails. It wouldn't close all the way, though, not with the smiling god pushing back. Even a crack was enough for the light to seep in, enough for us all to be wiped clean, for all that Strex himself couldn't completely pass through. That's why he needed Night Vale, you see. Or, not Night Vale specifically; anywhere would do. Yours was just the first town to draw attention to itself.”

Kevin’s hand falls to the sand. “It’s probably Erika’s fault,” he adds sourly.

“Think on this, though, scientist. Think on what happened in Desert Bluffs. What swept over my home was only the smallest part of the smiling god’s power, and yet it still burned us up from the inside out and left us stuffed like dolls with our own ashes. If he were to fully enter our world, there would be nothing left. The universe would unravel, all the atoms that make up reality working so furiously that they just shiver apart to dust.”

“You’re warning me against him?” Carlos asks tentatively.

“I--“ Kevin seems to shiver, just a little, and he shakes his head, just a little. “I worship a smiling god,” he says, but it’s more to himself than to Carlos, almost a question.

Sometimes, Carlos finds it very hard not to feel sorry for Kevin.

He finds it just as hard not to compare him to Cecil, sometimes, too. Kevin has the same irresistible charisma, although less tempered by Cecil's inherent and adorable goofiness. He has the same sort of timbre in his voice that fascinates and draws one's attention, the lilt and cadence of words that have been planned and chosen and put out into the world with ineffable purpose.

There's something-- something _off_ about Kevin that isn't there with Cecil, though. Cecil mostly makes Carlos want to wrap him up in a hug and nudge his nose into Cecil's hair and put his ear on his chest and just listen. With Kevin, there's a bit of the same pull, the same fascination, but at the same time there's a pervasive sense of unease, an equal and opposing _push_ to balance things out. And that could be the influence of the smiling god or it could be something inherent, impossible to tell.

From what Kevin had been telling him, Desert Bluffs had been Night Vale's sister city long before the arrival of the smiling god and the rise of Strexcorp; who knows what its voice would have been like even then?


	6. Chapter 6

It's inevitable, of course, that Carlos' patience eventually breaks. In his past he has waited out tricky experiments with placid calm, spent hours calibrating sensitive equipment without any complaint, but weeks (or months? Years?) of featureless desert with no progress to speak of is apparently the straw on the back of this particular camel.

It doesn't help that Cecil was particularly urgent in his pleading during their latest phone call. Carlos would almost go so far as to say Cecil was _angry_ at the usual excuses. And technically speaking that’s exactly what Carlos wants, it’s what the excuses are for, and better an angry Cecil than a despairing one, but it’s still getting a little hard to swallow. Carlos _is_ looking, he _does_ want to go back to Night Vale, and the fact that Cecil’s starting to think he doesn’t care hurts more than Carlos had been expecting.

Also, he is _so very done_ with sand.

Sleep is no escape; all of his dreams have filled with light and empty space. He takes up pacing the camp after all of the warriors have settled into stillness, restless and frustrated with his thoughts running in fruitless circles. This is how Kevin finds him, therefore, when the man finally shows up again after a prolonged absence, arriving at exactly the right or wrong moment, depending on one's perspective.

On the one hand, Kevin is still the same dangerous, unpredictable man he’s always been, despite the astonishing tolerance that he’s been showing Carlos so far. It wouldn’t do to underestimate him, or to count on his good will in future, or to think that one false move wouldn’t make him turn on Carlos in a heartbeat. On the other--

On the other hand, stalking up to Kevin the moment he comes sauntering into camp and growling out an angry “where the hell have you been?” feels _really good_.

Kevin mostly seems amused at the greeting. “Why, Carlos. Did you miss me?”

"Shut up. Just-- _argh_." Carlos huffs out a breath through his nose, rubs furiously at his eyes and then at his scalp, feeling the tiny stings of hair pulling. "Don't, all right? Just give me a straight answer for once."

Kevin tips his head to the side, is silent long enough that Carlos' irritation cools and he starts to wonder if he's gone too far.

"You're wandering the desert, searching for your way home," Kevin eventually says. "Is it so strange to think that I'm looking for something, too?"

"Like what?"

Kevin's head tips back, this time, and Carlos can only imagine his eyes roaming the starry heavens. "Clarity," he offers. "Answers. Thoughts and dreams and memories. What else does one look for in the long, slow silences?"

Carlos drops to the sand, cross-legged, the frustrated anger draining from him all of a sudden like a plug had been pulled. "Why do you talk to me, then?"

"Surely a scientist can understand the value of talking things out. Surely someone with your-- _particular_ familiarity with Cecil can understand the value of words spoken aloud. Putting thoughts to sound gives them weight, gives them permanence. Gives them order, sometimes, where before they held only uncertainty."

A pause, another head-tilt. Kevin drops to the sand, too, rusty-red hands settling on his knees. "Go on. Try it."

Carlos sighs heavily, looking out across the desert. "There's nothing here," he says. And Kevin is right: saying the words out loud, admitting them, is somehow settling. "We could keep looking like this forever and I don't think we'd ever find a door. I'm not sure we're even moving, some days, how can I hope to set up a proper search pattern when it feels like time and space aren't working properly?"

Somehow he's on his feet again, facing the lighthouse blinking in the distance. Never as far away as he thinks it should be, given how far they've walked-- how far he _thinks_ they've walked. The only defined feature in a featureless plain.

He looks at it. He sighs. "I have to go back to the mountain, don't I," he says flatly.

Kevin hums noncommittally.

"It's the only lead I've got. There has to be something there that I can work with. I just have to not look at the picture frames, right?" It will be a risk, because if he's not strong enough to resist then Strex will come and he'll be overwhelmed; he isn't optimistic enough to think that he can get away twice. But it's a risk he thinks he's finally desperate enough to take. He'll just have to make himself be strong enough. For as long as it takes.

He shoots a sidelong look at Kevin, who's still sitting where Carlos left him. Kevin, his best source of information and probably his best hope for answers. "You're coming with me," Carlos hears himself say.

"Oh? Am I?"

"Yes," he says firmly. Then, softer: "please."

Kevin falls into another long silence, while Carlos waits anxiously. "Well. Since you've asked so nicely, I suppose I could keep you company."

When Doug and Alicia and the others wake, they are less than impressed to find Kevin in their midst. Carlos has told them of the man’s previous visits, of course, in the spirit of full disclosure, but apparently it's different to actually see him face to face. They ring him with their spears at the ready, and the sound of their discontent is like grinding sand.

They are equally unimpressed with the idea of going back to the mountain, when Carlos makes that proposal. **Forward, not back** a few of them say; and **too much, too close, too bright** say others. In the end, Doug and Alicia are the only ones who stand by him, watching the rest of their group walk away with mournful little groans.

"You don't have to," Carlos offers. "Really, I can make it there on my own, you don't have to--"

Alicia taps him gently on the head. **Hush. Freely offered, freely given. Help.**

**Faster,** Doug adds, with a teasing note in his _thoughtwords_. **Small legs waste much time.**

Doug picks Carlos up and sets him in place on his shoulder. Both Doug and Alicia turn then to look at Kevin. Neither make a move to reach towards him.

"Don't mind me," Kevin calls cheerfully. "I'll keep up."

Both warriors growl at him before turning to walk away.


	7. Chapter 7

They arrive at the base of the mountain in what feels like no time at all, which only reinforces Carlos' belief that they have, perhaps, been walking in circles all this time. He conducts a more detailed examination of the lighthouse when they reach the top, tapping the surface, pressing his ear against it, prodding at the near-seamless join between the wall and the stone it stands upon. He even has Doug lift him up so he can press his face against the glass near the top. But whatever the source of the light behind that glass, it's sealed up tight behind smooth, seamless panels that waver and cloud when he tries to peer through them.

Kevin appears at some point during this procedure, unruffled and without fanfare. He wordlessly falls in behind Carlos as Carlos starts down the spiraling path.

For the sake of being thorough, Carlos goes back into each one of the rooms he searched before, trying to see them with fresh eyes, trying to note details he may have missed the first time around. Trying to find something important, because surely there has to be _something_. It's a fruitless search, and he’s soon working his way into new territory, but he tries anyway.

He carefully does not look at any of the frames on the walls, doesn't linger near one for very long, doesn't even let himself _think_ about them for very long, no matter how much he wants to. Kevin, he quickly notes, is just as careful as Carlos himself, if not more so. He waits with all apparent patience outside in the hallway, or stands with his face averted at the far side of whatever room they’re in.

It's too much for Carlos' curiosity to leave alone. "What would you see?" he asks.

Kevin gives an elaborate shrug and doesn’t pretend not to know what Carlos means. "I don't know. I don't want to know."

Carlos blinks. "Really?" He's not sure he can comprehend deliberately _not_ wanting to know things.

"Yes," Kevin bites out. "Think about it. Think of the possibilities. I see nothing. I see nothing but the smiling god. I see the halls and offices of Strexcorp. I see Desert Bluffs as it once was. None of these are good options."

"I don't know, that last one doesn't sound that bad." Carlos pauses, thinks about Night Vale, and then thinks about what its sister city might once have been. "Maybe."

Kevin gives a careless, dismissing wave. "It's gone, and I don't remember it.”

Carlos thinks about saying _this could help you remember it_ , thinks about reminding Kevin of his own words, his own apparently longing for _thoughts_ and _dreams_ and _memories_. But Kevin’s tone is brittle in a way that Carlos hasn’t heard it before, each consonant bitten off viciously, and his face is pinched. Carlos decides in favour of discretion, for once, and lets it go.

They work their way down, always down, eventually leaving the houses behind and moving into a section of the mountain that is only rough-hewn tunnels and what look like vast storage rooms filled now with nothing but dust. Carlos dutifully looks inside each one, then moves further downward. He has this vague idea, almost a daydream, that he’ll open up one of these doors and find the root of it all, some ancient machine or carven pillar, something that powers the frames above, or connects them. Something he can use. The idea of it is so strong and vivid in his mind that when the tunnel turns abruptly, doubling back on itself, and then ends in a tumble of broken stone, Carlos at first doesn’t understand what he’s seeing.

For a moment, he just stares at it. There’s a narrow path leading off to the side, but it’s going back upwards and has a dim light at its end that makes him think of the sky. The main path going downward, on the other hand, is just--

Gone.

The ancient, splintered wood that sticks out in places along the corridor's rock surface might have been a door, once. It still vaguely resembles one, albeit one with twisted hinges and a shattered jamb, its opening filled with tumbled stone. Whatever had laid below and beyond is inaccessible now. Even if Carlos could get the warriors to shift the stone-- which he can’t, they simply won’t fit this far down-- more would likely just fall to take its place. Strong as his friends are, they can’t carry away the entire mountain.

Anything that had been in there was doubtlessly crushed anyway. If that door had ever warded off the light, its days of use were long gone.

Carlos stares at it wordlessly for a long, long time, before turning silently and walking away. His thoughts, for once, are dizzyingly, echoingly blank.

The second, smaller tunnel has no branches or doors, and it spits him out partway down the sharp slopes of the mountain. From above, he hears a questioning mutter from Doug, but he doesn’t wait, just skids down by himself, not paying any attention to the shards of rock that slice through his sleeves or the fact that he’s probably going much too fast. Somehow, he makes it to the bottom in one piece and then just-- stops. Stares out at the desert and doesn’t have the faintest idea of what to do next.

He takes out his phone but doesn’t press any of the buttons, just rubs his thumb along the side. Cecil is just one call away, and yet--

And yet. What would he say? What _can_ he say?

Behind him, Kevin settles with a clatter of stones. “Well,” he says brightly. “That was fun.”

Carlos closes his prickling eyes. “Shut up,” he mutters.

“Come now, Carlos, it’s not so bad.”

“Not so bad?” Carlos echoes, incredulous. “How do you figure? Literally the only lead I had just turned out to be a dead end. I’ve got _nothing_ , I have no idea where to go from here, so please, tell me how that’s _not bad_?”

He stalks off into the desert, his back to the mountain and the disappointment it embodies. Kevin dogs his heels.

“This isn't such a bad place for you, is all I meant,” Kevin says. “You've got your tall friends. And you've said it yourself, there’s enough here to discover to keep any scientist busy for a multitude of lifetimes."

"There's enough in Night Vale, too," Carlos answers firmly, loyally. “And yeah, I'd miss Doug and Alicia and the others if I went back, sure.” He stops and looks behind, just for a second, to see the mountain faded back towards the horizon-- as it does-- and the two masked warriors catching up fast. “But I have friends there, too. My team." _Cecil_ , he adds internally. 

"They're that important to you?" There is something very intent in Kevin's tone, it should make Carlos cautious but he's just so tired of guarding his words.

"Yes," he says plainly. "They're so, so important. All of them. They're--" he pauses, searching for the right words. 

"Family," Kevin says quietly.

Carlos sighs, closes his eyes, and nods. 

"I had a family once, I think," Kevin says, after a moment in which the silence stretches and grows. "It's hard to think of them. It feels like a long, long time ago. But real. I'm sure they were real."

“Then you know why I’ve got to go back to mine.”

“But it’s _Night Vale_ ,” Kevin says, his voice full of disdain and scorn and rival superiority. “Don’t let those rose-tinted glasses fool you, Carlos; that city is no place for an outsider. It’s a mess of brutal inefficiency. It’s a history of blood and a promise of more to come.”

“Yes!” Carlos nearly shouts, whirling on Kevin. “Yes, it is. Night Vale is-- it’s Valentine's Day massacres, and floating cats, and bloodstone rituals, and secrets and re-education. It's enough to make me question my sanity on a daily basis. Cecil's idea of normal is so far off from what my own used to be that I don’t think the word even technically applies, but you know what? I’m not sure that even matters anymore.” He pauses, breathing hard like he’s been running. “I don’t _want_ it to matter. I just--”

Night Vale is strange, and he _doesn't care_. Night Vale is where he wants to be. It’s where he belongs. It’s where Cecil is.

He looks up at the flashing stars, and finds himself longing for the lights above the Arby's, instead. “I just want to go _home_.”

And in that moment of pure, heartfelt longing--

A door appears.


	8. Chapter 8

The door is made of roughened, dark wood, and the knob is tarnished, sand-scratched brass. The frame stands freely in the open desert, no more than fifty feet away, angled just enough that Carlos can see the empty space on either side. A drift of sand has collected against one side of it; if Carlos hadn’t seen it appear with his own eyes, he would have sworn it had always been there.

Amidst his own shock, he looks to Kevin, if only to make sure that he isn’t the only one to see it. Carlos has the distinct pleasure of seeing Kevin’s face gone utterly slack and open with surprise. He’s not smiling. He looks-- startlingly young.

After a moment, he also looks startlingly afraid.

As Carlos watches, light starts flooding towards them from the horizon behind Kevin, beyond the mountain, starting like a sunrise and then surging forward like a tidal wave.

Doug and Alicia are already running, fleeing. Doug looks back, once; Carlos hesitates and then, decisively, waves him away. If this is his chance-- his _choice_ \-- then he isn’t going to run away from it. He knows, somehow, that he won’t get another one.

Carlos starts to run towards the door, cursing the drag of sand beneath his feet. It hardly seems to get closer-- like the mountain, a fixed and moveable point all in one; like a dream, his feet running and running and making no headway.

It’s inevitable that he trips. Trips and rolls and ends up looking back towards that glowing horizon, fire-bright, nova-bright. And at the front of that wave, the barest hint of a brighter anti-silhouette, not a giant or a monster but a man formed of sheer, mind-rending brilliance, or maybe that's just how Carlos' brain desperately tries to translate it. Lying sprawled on the sand, Carlos gasps, and the air sticks solid in his throat. He can't look at the approaching form. He can’t look away. The corners of his mouth twitch up even as his thoughts start to slip from him.

Hands claw into his arm, pulling him to his feet, pushing him forward. His hands strike a wooden surface-- shockingly cold, it brings him back to himself in a rush. He turns his head just enough to follow those gripping hands, and finds Kevin there. Kevin, who turns back towards the smiling god with his own smile fierce and full of teeth. His eyes-- for the first time Carlos can really see them, can look at them and remember them after the fact, and they are burned black, they are _burning_ , full of the smiling god's own light and yet blind and empty. The look in those eyes sends Carlos reeling until he’s leaning hard on the door for balance.

“When you open the door,” Kevin says clearly, “be quick. Don’t leave it open for longer than you have to, and be very, very sure that it’s shut tight behind you. I'll buy you time.”

“Can you do that?”

“He’s stronger than I am. But I slowed him down once, I can do it again. Long enough. I hope.” He looks at Carlos, then, and Carlos looks back-- really _looks_ , possibly for the first time. Beyond the twisting smile, the burning eyes, the long-dried streaks of red staining skin and hair, the fingernail-scars around the throat-- beyond all of that, it could have been Cecil standing there before him.

_I had a family once,_ Kevin’s voice says in his memory. And: _I don't remember having a brother,_ says Cecil’s. The shock of realization leaves Carlos reeling. Sister cities. Brother voices. The tape, and the brother that vanished. He isn’t sure why he didn’t see it before. Isn’t sure why it matters, just then, with everything else that’s going on, but it does.

Impulsively, Carlos reaches out. “Come with me.”

Kevin’s smile gentles and looks, just for a moment, wistful and soft. “That’s sweet. But if I don’t slow my good master down, then the moment you open that door he’ll be here, and you’ll be as good as dead, and everything will end.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Words have power, my dear scientist. Ask your Tamika about that. Ask Cecil. And _words_ ,” he says sharply, “are a voice’s speciality.” Then he's gone, grinning the shark grin, peeling back his lips and drawing in a huge breath.

“Stop,” he says, stalking away towards the approaching light. His voice grows louder with every step, going from a growl to a roar to a booming thunder that makes the air shake. “You _will_ stop. You will not step your foot beyond this door. You will not blind anyone else. You will not strip away their voices.”

The light’s flooding advance seems to hesitate, eddying back onto itself, slowing to a crawl as if in confusion. Carlos' ears are ringing, may be bleeding; he can hardly move for the pressure in his head. He fumbles behind him for the door handle.

“ **You.** ”

His fingers find cool metal, but he hesitates there with it in his hand.

“ **Will**.”

What if, after everything, the door doesn’t lead to Night Vale? All of those doors had been sealed, he’d seen that, so would one really open up again just for him? With his luck, this one would let him out in Luftnarp or somewhere equally remote.

“ ** _Stop._** ”

But he could still get home from Luftnarp, or wherever. Even if he had to _walk_ , he could find a way. And once he’s back in Night Vale, he vows to fill out all of the arcane and bizarre paperwork of the citizenship application the moment he’s within the city limits, no matter how potentially lethal the process is. If he'd just done it before, despite the warnings, this all might never have happened.

Carlos sees Kevin brace his feet, his body just a faint grey silhouette against the light. Sees him swell as he draws in a deep breath. Carlos has a feeling that he won’t survive whatever sound Kevin is about to make; he wonders if Kevin himself will.

Carlos twists his wrist, falls through the door, and slams it behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To anyone who's made it this far, I have a question for you: is this a satisfying enough ending, or does it need an epilogue? This is where my original notes and outline had the story stopping, but now I'm not quite sure.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Decided to write an epilogue after all. The previous ending, despite being what I had planned on all along, seemed a little too abrupt.

  
**Excerpt from Night Vale Community Radio Transcripts, City Hall Record Archive, April 2Apr A A#p Ap*#23#2222 *May**

**CECIL** : So come on down to Murray’s Gym and they’ll help you meet all of your fitness goals. It can’t hurt! Except in the way that everything hurts, eventually, because all life is inevitably made of pain.

**CECIL** : Now, listeners, I-- oh!

**_Cecil is interrupted by a clattering sound_ **

**CECIL** : This-- oh my goodness. Listeners, an old oak door has just appeared here in my studio, unfortunately startling me out of my chair. It looks like all of the other doors that so recently were taken away in a sudden, city-saving, and boyfriend-stealing manner, but it certainly can’t be one of those. Right? Certainly not.

**CECIL** : Um. If any of our listeners today are most definitely not angels, they mght want to pop by the studio in a hasty fashion and just make sure of--

**_Cecil is cut off by sounds of static; feedback squealing; a resonating background scream; a bitten-off cry of pain; sudden silence broken only by the sound of breathing; more clattering as of things falling off a desk; coughing._ **

**CECIL** (very faintly): Oh my god.

**_Sound of a throat clearing._ **

**CECIL** : Listeners, the door has vanished again, leaving behind only a thick layer of sand all over the studio floor and a-- a man, lying in the center of it. He-- his hair is certainly stunning, even as mussed and dusty as it is, and his coat may once have been standard scientist white, but--

**_More coughing; a long, ragged inhale._ **

**MALE VOICE** : Cecil?

**_4.26 seconds of silence._ **

**CECIL** (shouting): Carlos!

**_Thumping sounds; rattling; a microphone squealing in protest as it is dropped; a muffled sob._ **

**_Seven heartbeats worth of silence._ **

**_The weather begins._ **  



End file.
